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Abstract

Tissue remodeling is an essential process that occurs in multicellular
organisms and is essential for the growth, development, and health of any
organism. Drosophila melanogaster is an important organism for the study of this
process as tissue remodeling is crucial for proper metamorphosis, during which
the larval fat body remodels from a sheet of connected, polygonal cells into
single, spherical cells which can then move throughout the body and head cavity
of the fly. In this study, complementation tests were performed on lines of flies
that each had a single mutation on the third chromosome that resulted in both
abnormal fat body morphology and pharate adult lethality. The F1 progeny were
scored for fat body morphology and adult lifespan post-eclosion in order to
elucidate the relationship between the two phenotypes and better understand the
role of potential novel genes. Abnormal fat body morphology was found to result
in a reduced lifespan post-eclosion, where the degree of remodeling shows a
slightly positive correlation with lifespan. In addition, I have begun to linkage
map some of the mutations using pairs of dominant markers to identify the region
of the third chromosome where each mutation is present.